Peru Singh
Founder
Despite being a creative house that offers solutions that most agencies would, Niraalatakes it a step further, and as its name suggests, does things a bit differently. The brainchild of Peru Singh and Vanni Sharma, Niraala was founded with a vision to create a multi-creative ecosystem to push homegrown brands with powerful marketing experiences, to nurture the growth of the Indian art scene and to contribute to India's thriving creative community. Through collaborative imagination, innovation, and inspiration; Niraala transforms mere ideas into tangible artistry. Peru Singh has been a natural leader right from her days of being a basketball player at the Nationals and has always fostered the desire to view problems differently, applying novel and creative solutions.
In an exclusive interview with CEO INSIGHTS, Peru Singh highlights her professional journey and offers an insight into her young business, from its inception to execution and beyond.
Tell us briefly about your educational and professional background and how you are leveraging the best of these elements across your company’s operations.
I am a math graduate from Miranda House, University of Delhi and also have a background in Fine Arts and Pottery. I have always enjoyed art and creative undertakings but was also enamored by numbers and science. Thus, in pursuit of a career that allowed me to tap into both my left and right sides of the brain - I discovered the world of marketing. Driven by innovation and backed by evidence, marketing has been on the front lines of the digital revolution, which has never failed to pique my interest and curiosity.
During my graduation days, I presided over the Entrepreneurship Cell. The experiences garnered from that stint have catalyzed my proclivity towards exploring marketing as a career, leading me to my first job at Groupon. Although I began there in sales, the marketer in me soon found her niche.
Over the last seven years I have worked at diverse industries from B2C, D2C to B2C and brought varied marketing, designing and account management perspectives to my engagements with my clients.
Share with us the inception story of the company?
As the pandemic crisis hit us all in 2020, my good friend, Vanni, an incredible digital strategist and I, bonded over a wishful idea of starting something of our own, owing to our collective experience, knowledge and understanding of the industry. Having worked in marketing for 7 years, I had closely observed the creative voids that agencies failed to fill and the culture of templatization they fostered, which absolutely vexed me. From the ardent desire to circumvent these challenges and to offer an unorthodox approach to solving marketing problems, Niraala was
born. It's indeed quite ironic how the pandemic that, unfortunately, pushed businesses into a downward spiral, catapulted mine.
The inspiration behind Niraala was to not be a traditional marketing agency but an open platform that cultivates connections. It’s a digital-first collective of curators and colourful craftsperson’s empowering the local, homegrown brands of India. Niraala’s longterm aspiration is to not limit itself solely to marketing+branding+design offerings but to further spread its wings to contribute to India's alternative art, music and community culture.
What were the major challenges during your journey at Niraala and how did you manage to overcome them?
When it comes to challenges, we indeed came across a few. The first one we encountered was to carve a niche for ourselves in the market, as marketing is ridiculously vast and every small brand is looking for 360-degree solutions. After trialling a few approaches, I learned that it’s vital to become a market leader for ‘one solution’ rather than hoping to be stellar at everything. The next and one of the biggest challenges that Niraala faced, was to grapple with remote working and find ways to optimise processes to keep the wheels in motion.
With a team that is not just spread across the country but the globe, we have been able to discover balance and strong communication to continue collaborating and brainstorming. The final hurdle in our journey was to ensure that our clients were equipped with the right understanding of what marketing solutions would be optimal for their challenges as opposed to what they believed would work. To reason and effectively communicate our stance with clients was a learning curve, which we have now, with experience, been able to streamline. Love the whole process.
With more than seven years of experience in different verticals of industries, how has industry experience been helping you in shaping your leadership journey?
One of the finest lessons that I learned was empathy and the significance of not imposing your ideas on your team. It's so important to harness your team's talents, their unique strengths and their skills to drive them to achieve the collective goal.
My leadership skills haven't come much from my experience of working in this industry as much as it's come outside of the four walls. Being a basketball player, I learned how teamwork can make miracles happen and how in sport or professional life, communication and camaraderie are key to channeling the team to accomplish the common objectives.
My mother is an IPS officer who sets a strong example as a role model from whom I learned how to be bold, fierce, and not conform to the rules defined for womxn.
Society today is witnessing the evolution of women entrepreneurship. What is your perspective towards it?
It is no hidden fact that not only do womxn make up less than a third of marketers, but they're also paid significantly lower than their male counterparts. Cognizant of this challenge, our endeavour was to build an agency that invites, applauds and encourages the contributions of creative womxn in
The inspiration behind Niraala was to not be a traditional marketing agency but an open platform that cultivates connections. It’s a digital-first collective of curators and colourful craftsperson’s empowering the local, homegrown brands of India. Niraala’s longterm aspiration is to not limit itself solely to marketing+branding+design offerings but to further spread its wings to contribute to India's alternative art, music and community culture.
Niraala has been a very humbling experience and we are proud to say that our customer acquisition cost has been zero since inception
What were the major challenges during your journey at Niraala and how did you manage to overcome them?
When it comes to challenges, we indeed came across a few. The first one we encountered was to carve a niche for ourselves in the market, as marketing is ridiculously vast and every small brand is looking for 360-degree solutions. After trialling a few approaches, I learned that it’s vital to become a market leader for ‘one solution’ rather than hoping to be stellar at everything. The next and one of the biggest challenges that Niraala faced, was to grapple with remote working and find ways to optimise processes to keep the wheels in motion.
With a team that is not just spread across the country but the globe, we have been able to discover balance and strong communication to continue collaborating and brainstorming. The final hurdle in our journey was to ensure that our clients were equipped with the right understanding of what marketing solutions would be optimal for their challenges as opposed to what they believed would work. To reason and effectively communicate our stance with clients was a learning curve, which we have now, with experience, been able to streamline. Love the whole process.
With more than seven years of experience in different verticals of industries, how has industry experience been helping you in shaping your leadership journey?
One of the finest lessons that I learned was empathy and the significance of not imposing your ideas on your team. It's so important to harness your team's talents, their unique strengths and their skills to drive them to achieve the collective goal.
My leadership skills haven't come much from my experience of working in this industry as much as it's come outside of the four walls. Being a basketball player, I learned how teamwork can make miracles happen and how in sport or professional life, communication and camaraderie are key to channeling the team to accomplish the common objectives.
My mother is an IPS officer who sets a strong example as a role model from whom I learned how to be bold, fierce, and not conform to the rules defined for womxn.
Society today is witnessing the evolution of women entrepreneurship. What is your perspective towards it?
It is no hidden fact that not only do womxn make up less than a third of marketers, but they're also paid significantly lower than their male counterparts. Cognizant of this challenge, our endeavour was to build an agency that invites, applauds and encourages the contributions of creative womxn in
the industry, and partner with like-minded individuals who persistently challenge the status quo and believe in true parity.
To create the kind of working culture we wanted, we decided to make womxn and LGBTQIA+ equity and inclusion the focus of our creative house, both internally and with the clients. It's so important for young womxn to identify and surround themselves with strong and professional womxn leaders within the marketing industry, follow them and learn from their experiences. I strongly support, welcome, and encourage the growth and inclusion of more womxn leaders and entrepreneurs across industries, who are slowly and surely growing in numbers, but it’s still far from ideal.
What are the marketing strategies you leverage to address the target audience in the demanding market and how do you position yourself in your market?
We position ourselves as an alternative to a traditional marketing agency - in terms of size, values and offerings. We like to do things a little out of the norm, empowering businesses using design, data and a human-driven approach. For our clients, creativity of our solutions and transparency about our offerings are what sets us apart from the rest. Niraala is personal, just how agencies should be (but aren’t).
Our focus is to create bespoke, potent designs, brands with beating hearts. We curate from scratch and commit to the creative grind, handpicking experts from this counterculture of urban visionaries, problem-solvers and mad-talented creatives.
Staying true to our mission of empowering local Indian businesses, we are also working on doing gratis projects for branding, social media marketing, print boards and WhatsApp marketing, for small local brands that have been severely affected by the pandemic and are unable to get traction for their businesses due to lack of marketing support.
How has the company's growth been since its inception? And what does the future roadmap look like?
Niraala has been a very humbling experience and we are proud to say that our customer acquisition cost has been zero since inception. Most of the clients that we've had the privilege to collaborate with have either come through word of mouth or social media connections.
Looking ahead, we will be tapping into some uber-exciting verticals of marketing such as Video Marketing, Meme Campaigns and our personal favorite, Vernacular Marketing. It's surprising that in a country like India, where over 150 languages are spoken, most of the communications are carried out either in English or Hindi. Hence, one of the things we are building is our in-house capability to craft personalized marketing that's centred around the audience’s unique cultural values, local language and regional distinctions steering away from any communication that could potentially restrict the brand and alienate its audience.
Peru Singh, Founder, Niraala
Renowned for skill excellence in branding, strategy and planning, creative solutions, entrepreneurship, Peru started career as Social Media Manager after completing Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Delhi University with First Class Honours. Almost 10 years into her career, Peru has worked in different marketing roles for various successful companies. Peru is known for her Brand & Market research and End-to-end business Development, Vendor Network Creation & Management, Brand Identity Development and Growth Strategy, Capture, Analyse and Report Consumer Insights.
To create the kind of working culture we wanted, we decided to make womxn and LGBTQIA+ equity and inclusion the focus of our creative house, both internally and with the clients. It's so important for young womxn to identify and surround themselves with strong and professional womxn leaders within the marketing industry, follow them and learn from their experiences. I strongly support, welcome, and encourage the growth and inclusion of more womxn leaders and entrepreneurs across industries, who are slowly and surely growing in numbers, but it’s still far from ideal.
What are the marketing strategies you leverage to address the target audience in the demanding market and how do you position yourself in your market?
We position ourselves as an alternative to a traditional marketing agency - in terms of size, values and offerings. We like to do things a little out of the norm, empowering businesses using design, data and a human-driven approach. For our clients, creativity of our solutions and transparency about our offerings are what sets us apart from the rest. Niraala is personal, just how agencies should be (but aren’t).
Our focus is to create bespoke, potent designs, brands with beating hearts. We curate from scratch and commit to the creative grind, handpicking experts from this counterculture of urban visionaries, problem-solvers and mad-talented creatives.
Staying true to our mission of empowering local Indian businesses, we are also working on doing gratis projects for branding, social media marketing, print boards and WhatsApp marketing, for small local brands that have been severely affected by the pandemic and are unable to get traction for their businesses due to lack of marketing support.
How has the company's growth been since its inception? And what does the future roadmap look like?
Niraala has been a very humbling experience and we are proud to say that our customer acquisition cost has been zero since inception. Most of the clients that we've had the privilege to collaborate with have either come through word of mouth or social media connections.
Looking ahead, we will be tapping into some uber-exciting verticals of marketing such as Video Marketing, Meme Campaigns and our personal favorite, Vernacular Marketing. It's surprising that in a country like India, where over 150 languages are spoken, most of the communications are carried out either in English or Hindi. Hence, one of the things we are building is our in-house capability to craft personalized marketing that's centred around the audience’s unique cultural values, local language and regional distinctions steering away from any communication that could potentially restrict the brand and alienate its audience.
Peru Singh, Founder, Niraala
Renowned for skill excellence in branding, strategy and planning, creative solutions, entrepreneurship, Peru started career as Social Media Manager after completing Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Delhi University with First Class Honours. Almost 10 years into her career, Peru has worked in different marketing roles for various successful companies. Peru is known for her Brand & Market research and End-to-end business Development, Vendor Network Creation & Management, Brand Identity Development and Growth Strategy, Capture, Analyse and Report Consumer Insights.